Ted Lasso

I think it's definitely the latter, to my mind our absolute best 22 includes both Ben Brown and Jack Viney, we haven't been great in clearances all year, but we've fallen away significantly without Viney, not only because of his output, but the referred pressure. Depth is everything in the AFL, when Viney is in there it takes pressure off everyone. Harmes becomes the 4th mid, Jordan the 5th etc. I don't know what the right mix is forward of the ball, but i do know that, if the dogs have a weakness, it's against tall forwards, and we know Jackson and Tmac will play, so it's down to who Goodwin and co think is the better player as of right now of Weideman and Brown, as to who is going to be better suited to exposing that weakness. I also think the form of Max Gawn dropping away slightly has made a huge difference, we rely so heavily on Max still for his marking around the ground and it's been undeniable he's not quite at his best.

Nailed it. Ben Brown and McDonald are different enough to function together with Jackson imo, the only other alternative is going high pressure and smaller with just McDonald and Jackson. Fritsch is effectively another tall, so we need a better balance of talls and pressure players Melkshams selections is genuinely baffling, and i know people don't like the suggestion that he's a coaches favourite player, but outside that i geneuinely don't get it

I think it'll be Hibberd that gets the job. i don't know that we match up all that well on the dogs forwards generally so we will be relying on pressure up the field

Does show how important Salem is to our team, we looked lost without him setting up the play

6 is fair enough, but i think it's fair to say based on our form in the first 10 games, we're almost certain to make finals, and we'd be very unlikely to fall away so badly we don't make top 4. But our goal, i'm sure is and should be a top 2 spot, and if we get that, we're a very real chance to make the Grand final. and i think any team would find us really hard to beat on the MCG.

Defense wins championships, this is a universal fact in all team sports, and we have the best defense in the AFL. yes there are areas to work on, but we're 9-1 we probably only need to win 1-2 more games to lock up finals and 4-5 to lock in top 4. we've got time. we are a massive chance to win the premiership, and we're up against our biggest competition on Friday night on their home deck. I'm expecting a strong response to the Crows loss and our 10th win.

some of his turn overs are down to his in ability to control his long kicks imv, which i'm not super worried about, i don't think he's a bad kick as such, but he's not and never will be a christian Salem by foot

Viney and Salem in Jetta and Melksham out Would also seriously consider BBB

Never met a Crows supporter capable of reading/writing so any bigfooty page has to be fake.

We need to show a really dominant performance soon, hopefully this week

He's so mouthy too, especially for a bloke who's achieved absolutely nothing as a player. even tonight he's had 15 touches and most of them have been turnovers and he's the most Lippy bloke out there.

Oliver i'd say is a better ball winner, better defensively, and better at his role, however Petracca is probably the more talented of the two.

My advice, keep doing whatever they're doing and slip into a 60 year re-build. Australia wins if that happens

Oliver is a better overall player.

Honestly mate, congrats on your guess, but Brayshaw is not getting dropped anytime soon, he is playing the role that's been set for him very well, but i'm not at all surprised you missed that.

I personally probably would have liked to see Sparrow given chance and Melksham go back to the VFL and find some really good form, but can't do much about it

Ben Brown is pretty stiff i reckon. considering the two rounds before last round he was averaging 2.5 goals a game which is consistent with the elite forwards of the comp, and was really just building back into it. not sure Weid did enough to dislodge him in my opinion. and Chandler is stiff to not get another week, but it's difficult to assess the impact Melksham has in a leadership capacity out there, because if it's not something like that, i genuinely doesn't make sense

he certainly does seem to get a bit more of a look in than other guys, and performance doesn't seem to be a factor, not sure what the word for that would be.

I have a crows supporting mate who's giving them no chance and thinks it could be a blood bath. i hope he's right.

I think there is also a little bit of ignorance to Gus's role this year unfortunately as well which doesn't help when assessing his performance

we're a bit spoilt by Christian Salem i think, must admit i haven't been concerned by Gus at all, he's playing an extremely selfless role for us, a lot of the play is directed through Langdon's wing, Gus is brilliant at getting to the right spots at the right time. obviously not the perfect footballer, but outside one stretch in 2018 i'd say this is the best patch of football i've seen him play. stoked to have Jacko back

Gut feel is that Weideman will miss, and Jackson will come back in

Our current wins and % would have been enough to secure a finals birth last season, the consistency we've achieved is incredible. even if we only win 50% of our games from here, we very likely finish top 4 if not top 2.

I think the important thing to note from the article is that the very worst side in terms of losing clearance differential is the 2019 tigers who lost by 4.7 clearances per game. so these teams generally are breaking even or getting close to it, rather than winning that stat. we've lost by quite a lot the last two weeks, and i genuinely believe we'd be a better side and won by more today, and last week if by instead of losing clearance by 10 and 12 or whatever it was, we lost it by 4-5. achieving this doesn't mean we have to compromise our defensive strength, but i think it should be an aim of the coaches to tinker with the set up to try and get that number a little bit closer. if we lose clearance to the dogs by 10-12 they're a big chance to score 5-6 goals just from that.

Okay, i should be more clear haha, it's not as much of a priority as it once was imo, we used to bring in extra numbers and really roll the dice, we're not doing that anymore, but all things being equal i'd like to see us reach a point where we're at least breaking even out of there. and when we do that, some of these 4 goal wins like total potentially become 10 goals wins. In saying that our clearance numbers will simply improve when JV is back in there and in fact we do seem stronger in that area when Luke Jackson is in there as well. No surprise we've had a bad two weeks in that space with Jackson and Viney out of the team